IT: In your own electronic music, how do you allow for the computer to take you to a different creative space — not being confined by it, as you suggest?
TP: You're referring to the Hub. [The Hub] was a fascination with the idea that you could create a system that has great complexity and unpredictability. Then as a musician, playing this instrument would have something of the character of playing with another person, because you don't know what they're going to do. The idea was to build that liveliness.
We started doing this in the late 70s . . . . We were not interested in using a computer to get more control over the situation and to specify things more exactly. We were interested in the idea of creating unpredictable systems, that would open up new possibilities that we didn't imagine.
To me, building an improvisational instrument is an instrument that has some unpredictable qualities. It represents a basic, philosophical stance that the good ideas don’t really come from individuals, they come out of a culture, they come out of a broader context. To build an instrument that has some unpredictable elements is going to be a richer experience than something that just carries out exactly and precisely your instructions.
IT: As an artist, is it frustrating not to be able to replicate that experience?
TP: I don't find that frustrating. I think that's the nature of it. When you look at a painter, each painting a painter makes is unique, sort of a performance. As they develop their art, they can duplicate things to a certain degree and create similar types of situations. That's your development as an artist, to be able to do that. But anything that's really alive as a work of art is unique, and has things happen that can't happen again. So, it's just the joy of discovering those unique situations.
IT: It strikes me in watching the musicians in this film, that it's a mature form of art — that people can allow their art to be infused with that spirit. It's letting go in a way.
TP: I think that's essentially true. I remember reading about this 19th century French potter, who talked about how when you open the kiln as a potter, you never know exactly what's going to be there. And sometimes, there would be these beautiful pots. But they were not what he wanted, and not what he'd planned, so he'd smash them. I thought, well that is the opposite of the spirit I’m talking about — the opposite of the spirit of Japanese pottery, or the spirit of this type of music — where it's not so tied up with power. It's really about being able to accept the happy accidents.
IT: Kenneth Atchley [in Noisy People] says a great thing — that he just hopes beauty happens on his watch.
TP: It's like the ancient idea about the muse visiting you. Lou Harrison, the California composer who died a few years ago, in one of his writings he talks about how you have to work and work steady. And you can't predict when the muse is going to visit, but at least you'll be there.
Tim Perkis is the Director of Noisy People, a film about experimental and improvisational musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can read a full review of Noisy People here. See the Noisy People website for information on upcoming screenings and for purchasing the DVD.
To learn more about improvisational musicians and performances in San Francisco and the Bay Area, see Bay Area Improviser.